Returning to the theme from my earlier article about the young being ‘seduced’ by the liberals on to a false detour. Liberalism has assumed some type of a default position amongst the youth who have grown wary of the Left. Liberals for their part make no bones about their belief that liberalism is the only acceptable challenge to socialism or social democratism.

Now it is only natural that the young, and many old as well, who have seen the chaos and misery fomented by socialism feel that if socialism is all bad, then its opposite must be all good. And here the liberals jump in with their claim that if the state were all about protecting private property and little else; everything else would be milk and honey.

The key question however is whether liberalism is truly the opposite of socialism. I answer this with a firm negative.

Who let the cat out of the bag? What cat? That deceitful, cunning, ruthless feline beast that goes by the name of Egalite’!

What defines the left is Equality. Equality of all different kinds. And how far along the egalitarian axis a political actor is willing to move defines how far left he is. Now who bought forth the criteria of equality as a political concept in public sphere? It wasn’t the left, they didn’t’ even exist at the time. It was the liberals! Liberals were the first ones who raised the war cry of equality.

The French Revolution, it all begins there. The liberals demanding political equality of all and sundry. Universal Suffrage! The first egalitarian political concept! Everyone gets an equal say in the affairs of the polity. Then came the rest of the usual suspects; extending this idea of equality to other spheres such as economics and international relations. Don’t forget, dear reader, it however all begins with the liberals.

Then liberalism, contrary to being the opposite of socialism, is actually its precedent. Another way to look at it is to step back and look at the Class of philosophies. Liberalism and Socialism both belong to the same political class, and can be said to be sub-classes of the larger class that we can term ‘Egalitarianism’. Then the sub-class ‘liberalism’ is the least egalitarian as it only preaches political equality and as we move further left we get sub-classes such as socialism that are more egalitarian that preach both economic and political equality. The most extreme sub-class of this would be environmentalism as it posits equality not just amongst humans but humans and animals and plants and planet.

These sub-classes are different; however they are all part of the larger class that we can define as the philosophy of equality that is egalitarianism.

Putting it in terms of class it becomes clearer what the true opposite of socialism (or any other of its fellow sub-classes) is. It would be a class of political philosophies that believe in: Hierarchy!

The Right then is much larger than the bourgeoisie liberalism that seeks to monopolize the right-wing stratosphere nowadays. The bourgeoisie criteria of private property and short-term economic efficiency cannot be the foundation of proper right wing thought. They can play a role but fundamentally the Right must be about creating a proper hierarchy. A hierarchy where the best are promoted to the top and have the most say. Where the state unapologetically stands for and champions all that is of high quality and against what is base and ignoble.

Not a neutral attitude towards public virtues on the part of the state, but the glorification of the heroic, the strong, the beautiful, the victorious and the wise. A civilization that is continuously trying to reach higher vistas and leave behind that which deserves to be left behind. A political order that that can be best summed up in one word: Aristocratic!

Though not today will you have the pleasure of my further thoughts on that. Getting back to this fashionable creature called the ‘liberal’.

The liberal says his ideology is the wave of the future. Liberalism is the ‘Next Big Thing’ for 21st century India. That is his attempt to charm the young and the gullible. The story goes first there was feudalism, then came socialism and now it is time for liberalism to take its rightful place under the 21st century sun. Funny thing, this narrative has one simple error: liberalism was also the ‘Next Big Thing’ at the dawn of 20th century India. Gokhale and Tagore were the thought leaders of those generations, not Engels and Marx.

And then came along socialism. Liberal feigns ignorance as to the cause of its arrival, but it germinated from liberalism itself. Fabian Socialism of early Independent India was made possible by Manchester Liberalism of the early 20th century. Not very new, this old hag laced with the latest perfume.

Let us break open the right side of the spectrum to a wide variety of new alternatives. Alternative ideologies that do not and cannot pay obeisance to demands of conformity with liberalism. Hence, we must affirm that right wing thought does not need to justify itself to bourgeoisie concerns to be legitimate and acceptable philosophies that will challenge the left.

New Right ideas that justify themselves with reference to their own values.

Let me now spook and bait the liberal with a small fry. Here is an ideology, firmly opposed to the left, yet not liberal either, that can be adopted by the young right: Martialism-Mercantilsm.

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Thank you,

TechnoFuturist

http://twitter.com/manohar_sram Manohar Seetharam

Interesting. Two things come to mind……..
1) You have proposed hierarchy as a guiding principle opposed to equality – the basis of socialism. But hierarchy as a principle was already tested historically in the form of feudalism, caste system etc. The modern bureaucracy too is based on hierarchy. Even present day society has a hierarchy. Every organisation/society has a hierarchy, it has always existed and will continue to exist. I think the challenge is about harmonising hierarchy with justice. A robust framework for justice within the right is certainly essential.
2) On the issue of principles themselves there is a problem. There is no one principle, but there are principles and…….there are principles. There is an open conflict between the principles of Liberty and Equality. It is fundamental. For every principle there is a counter principle – as you have clearly demonstrated in the case of equality Vs hierarchy. Hence the challenge – if there can be construct beyond the sundry principles……..every principle is by it’s very nature weak and can achieve only limited functions.